Tesla CEO Elon Musk was on Twitter this morning responding to a few questions – primarily about the new Easter Eggs the company included in its latest updates, but I thought maybe we could get a proper ‘Elon Tweetstorm’ on Christmas eve so I asked him about an update on Tesla’s plans to install solar arrays at Supercharger stations? He had this to say:

@FredericLambert There are some installed already, but full rollout really needs Supercharger V3 and Powerpack V2, plus SolarCity. Pieces now in place.

Tesla indeed operates a few Supercharger stations with solar arrays – like the Hawthorne Supercharger pictured above – but they only represent a small fraction of Tesla’s 760+ stations. But more importantly, It’s the first time we’ve heard about a third generation of Tesla’s Supercharger and that’s not all, Musk also hinted at a power output greater than 350 kW – up from the current ~150 kW.

It looks like Musk is teasing a power output greater than “a mere 350 kW”. It would be a significant upgrade and depending on the deployment schedule, it could blow past the stations from other companies planned only for late 2017 and 2018.

700kW x 1 hour= 700kWh so divide by 10: 6 minutes would give you 70kWh. That’s enough to drive for about 4 hours or 250 miles. Gas fuel pumps in the US pump 5-10 gallons per minute so add a 2 minute credit card transaction and you get about 20-40 gallons in the same time period. We’re now coming close to parity with gasoline.

The fast supercharger speed may also be why Tesla has abandoned the battery swap stations for consumer vehicles.